


Boats Against the Current

by cemetrygatess



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: A Stitch in Time - Andrew Robinson, Hopeful Ending, Light Angst, M/M, Metaphysics, Pining, Post-Canon, The Nature of Time, character study Julian bashir, he must on a certain level be unbearable, we are talking about a man who reads 500+ year old books in the 24th century
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-13 09:53:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29151531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cemetrygatess/pseuds/cemetrygatess
Summary: Lately, Julian has found he’s preoccupied by the passage of time.
Relationships: Julian Bashir/Elim Garak
Comments: 15
Kudos: 58
Collections: Star Trek: Just in Time Fest





	Boats Against the Current

**Author's Note:**

> I know a very medium amount about this topic so if I say something wrong I’m sorry, it’s also realistically because Julian knows a very medium amount about this. 
> 
> Thanks to plain_and_simple_tailor (ectogeo) for the beta read! All mistakes are my own.

> _ And yet, and yet… Denying temporal succession, denying the self, denying the astronomical universe, are apparent desperations and secret consolations. Our destiny … is not frightful by being unreal; it is frightful because it is irreversible and iron-clad. Time is the substance I am made of. Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire. The world, unfortunately, is real; I, unfortunately, am Borges. _
> 
> _ Jorge Louis Borges, A New Refutation of Time _

It was a Wednesday; Julian was drinking and thinking about Metaphysics. It was not like there was much else to do. 

Miles and Worf were long gone, Ezri recently transferred, and Kira was far too busy. Garak hadn’t written in months. Oh certainly there were new officers on station all the time, but they were often green, and often not on assignment for more than 6 months. This was the fourth new batch in two years, and Julian couldn’t bring himself to befriend people who would be gone as soon as they had come. Besides, they looked up to him too much. He was the world-weary veteran of the dominion war now. It was a role he didn’t feel suited to, but nonetheless was bound to play. 

So he drank alone, and thought about the past. 

Albert Einstein was a good place to start. Special relativity introduced the idea that time was relative to frame of reference, and that going fast enough changed one's experience of time. This was first year cadet stuff. Sometimes Julian thought if he traveled fast enough that he wouldn’t ever have to see his parents again; they would age much faster than him. Of course, the warp bubble nicely circumnavigated this effect. In most cases, this was convenient. 

Though traveling fast enough could change the speed at which time was experienced, it could not in effect bring you into the past, whatever the past was. 

Was the past really passed? Was it distinct from the present in containing some quality of pastness? Or was time merely an index of moments? 

Humans had long been obsessed with these questions. This led to all sorts of excellent art. And science, which felt at times like art. 

Julian thought about the prophets. (In the safety of his own brain he could call them that.) They made him think of Vonnegut’s Tralfamadorians. 4-dimensional beings which could see a life stretched out like a millipede, with a baby on one end and a dead person at the other. He thought of Jules at one end, small and confused. He thought of the man who left Earth, bright eyed and excited to get a shot at frontier medicine. He thought of how disconnected he felt from those people now; they did not feel like legs of his own body stretched through the past. 

Was this what the prophets saw? Or was there something unique about the present? 

Sisko had altered the plans of the prophets. He had gone against their wishes. This implied a free will, that future was far from set, that the waveform had not collapsed yet. 

He thought of Sylvia’s fig tree. Each future a bright and juicy fig, the inability to pick. As a youth he had not been able to understand this. When he was young he had run at decisions full speed; join StarFleet Medical, break up with Palis, ask to be posted at DS9, agree to weekly lunch with a mysterious Cardassian. It had been easy then, in the peak of youth to make these formative decisions. He had embraced choosing his own future. Now he lacked the surety to even know if he ought to stay on DS9. His enhancements had made promotion tricky, and political. And it wasn’t like he wanted a desk job anyway. 

It was embarrassing how truly he longed for the past. The nostalgic impulse embarrassed him, but that embarrassment did nothing to lessen the ache of it. His friends back on the station. Jadzia, bright and happy and alive. Ezri, before she decided she needed to leave him. Miles and any given holosuite battle. Garak smiling and lying and making his insides squirm with excitement. 

In the end, it seemed like Faulkner was right; “ The past is never dead. It's not even past.” For Julian had traveled back, not once, but twice. He had breathed the same air as Captain Kirk. He had tread into history wholly on accident. 

And he returned to a present much the same. 

This implied something immutable about the past. That it existed as a place one could return to. (At least it had been real. At least it had happened. That must be consolation enough.)

Whether the past was set in stone, he didn’t know. That sort of information was highly classified. 

The real past, the one he wished he could travel to was his own. Oh how he wanted to go back. He wanted to save Jadzia, or at least have one more drink with her. He wanted to apologize to Ezri, and to be the kind of friend or lover she had deserved. He wanted to kiss Garak in the holosuite instead of shooting him, or else to just have lunch again and to smile and wink and argue. 

Garak who had not written to him in months. Garak who was a constant in his thoughts. Elim whose blue eyes watched him in his dreams. 

“Another?” the Ferengi bartender asked. It wasn’t Quark, who was off station often these days. He had taken full advantage of his familial connections and franchised the bar. 

“Sure,” said Julian. “I have time.” 

The months passed, and a letter came for Julian. 

It began: 

_ My dear Doctor,  _

_ Forgive my delay in responding to your kind communications.  _

  
  


It was long and earnest, and in it’s own way pleading. Its author seemed to also live in the past, to feel that some moments had not been seized. It seemed they shared an acute loss of an imagined future. 

Reading it felt like a weight off his chest. Suddenly time’s arrow, pointing forward, was not a curse but a gift. The future opened up, like the sun peaking out. Perhaps the past could be a source of joy as well as pain, a binding between two hearts. Perhaps Time could be a friend as well an enemy. 

But most of all, Julian felt the potency of the present moment. The need to act and to experience in the now. Reflection, in the end, only had so much value. 

So he booked transport for Cardassia. 

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed this! Your comments and kudos are a delight (and a distraction from the question of if time really exists anyway).


End file.
